While social media continues to take
larger chunks out of marketing budgets, most companies
donít have any way to tell what kind of impact this
spending is having, according to a recent
blog post in
the Wall Street Journal.

The post cited research from
Duke University that showed increasing spending on
social media outlets, with about nine percent of
marketing budgets geared to social media now, and
expectations to grow to 13 percent over the next year
and 21 percent in the next five years. At the same time,
traditional advertising budgets are projected to shrink
almost four percent over the next year.

Are the spending
increases justified? Itís hard to tell, according to
this study. Only 15 percent of the marketers in the
research study stated that they could find quantitative
evidence of the impact of social media, while 40 percent
say that they can subjectively measure the impact.

If
the increased spending is related to the technology and
infrastructure needed to better analyze data generated
from social media, then maybe marketers will be able to
get a better handle on the effectiveness of the channel.
After all, at the end of the day, any marketing
initiative should be judged on results.